RadiciGroup releases its 2016 Sustainability Report

The
RadiciGroup 2016 Sustainability Report has been officially released. The
document reports on the objectives and goals achieved by the Group in the field
of economic, environmental and social sustainability, sets new challenges for
the organization and communicates its performance to all stakeholders in a
transparent way.

The 2016
edition is the Group’s 13th annual Sustainability Report, which, as in the
prior year, has been drawn up according to the guidelines of the Global
Reporting Initiative - version 4 (GRI G4 Core). For the 6th year in a row, the
Report has received external assurance by Certiquality, an accredited
certification body. In all, 21 RadiciGroup production companies, in addition to
the parent company, supplied information and data for the 25 quantitative and
qualitative performance indicators covered in the Sustainability Report. Over
70 people were involved in the preparation of the document.

“I am
really proud of our Sustainability Report,” said Angelo Radici, president of
RadiciGroup. “It represents a kind of Group “identity card” with an annual
renewal date, which we see not only as certification of our history as a
company committed to social responsibility - a trait that has defined us since
our very beginning - but also as motivation for new initiatives that will, year
after year, reinforce our commitment to the social and economic development of
the communities we are honoured to be a part of, operating at all times with
due respect for the environment”.

Despite the
fact that the margins for improvement are getting slimmer as a result of the
extensive work done by the Group during previous years, all environmental
performance indicators in 2016 turned out positive. For instance, 51.6% of the
electrical energy used by RadiciGroup in 2016 came from renewable energy
sources. This achievement was the result of a deliberate choice made by the
company to shift increasingly more towards energy sources with lower
environmental impact. During the past 6 years, this corporate policy led to an
increase in the percentage of electricity from renewable energy sources, which
went from 40.8% in 2011 to 51.6% in 2016.

In the same
6-year period, the Group also reduced its total consumption of energy from
fossil sources per unit of product processed by 17.5% (from 7.6 GJ/t in 2011 to
6.3 GJ/t in 2016). Finally, thanks to an improved energy mix and a corporate
strategy more heavily geared towards the use of best available techniques, the
emissions by Group companies during the last 6 years dropped from 1.00 tCO2eq/t
(2011) down to 0.49 tCO2eq/t (2016), a 51% reduction. Additionally, air
emissions have consistently improved, with a 68% drop in pollutants, mostly due
to the implementation of the latest generation abatement technologies, which
have greatly contributed to the Group’s improvement in overall environmental
performance.

“Our Group
has the capability to create wealth for all its stakeholders, but, at the same
time, we are committed to reducing the amount of resources needed to generate
it“, stressed Maurizio Radici, vice president of RadiciGroup. “Such a goal is
attained through our experience, the tireless efforts of every single employee,
and, of course, ongoing investment to improve plant technology. We’re aiming at
environmental sustainability combined with economic sustainability. This
strategy of resource optimization, plant efficiency improvement and energy
consumption reduction provides the Group with the conditions for continuous
growth”.

Indeed,
from the Report, it can be seen that, while the Group’s net total value added -
understood as the capability of a company to generate wealth to be distributed
among its stakeholders - increased during the last few years (over EUR 206
million in 2016, +12% compared to 2015), its resource consumption decreased,
yielding a “virtuous” ratio.

“I’d say
that our approach to sustainability can be summed up in these words: ecodesign
and the circular economy”, Angelo Radici concluded. “In practical terms, it
means that RadiciGroup is committed to developing low environmental impact
materials and, what’s more, having its products and processes certified. The
Group can be considered an ideal upstream supplier for an ecodesign-oriented
market, which thinks about materials even in terms of the end of their useful
life, putting into practice the European Union’s circular economy proposal. One
of our greatest challenges, which we are concentrating on group-wide in all
business areas, is the complete recyclability of our synthetic fibres: the goal
is for all our textile products to be mechanically recycled, so they become new
plastic materials for technical and industrial uses”.

Moving in
this direction is Radici Novacips, a company in the RadiciGroup Performance
Plastics Business Area (a manufacturer of polyamide and plastics engineering
plastics with headquarters in Chignolo d’Isola in the province of Bergamo,
Italy). The plant specializes in plastics recovery and the recycling of polymer
scrap from all Group plants (polymerization and extrusion scrap and spinning
waste). An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for the polyamide scrap
recovery service has been independently verified and registered. Other plants
in the Group’s Performance Plastics Business Area, located around the globe,
can thus use both the primary polymer raw material and the secondary recycled
raw material.

Concerning
social sustainability, the Report, as in the past, highlights the Group’s
workers: “As a private company, where we Radici brothers are the sole
shareholders, we care greatly about our employees,” Maurizio Radici noted. “Not
just our people who work here in Bergamo, where the Group was born and took its
first steps (1,000 of the Group’s 3,000 employees are based in Bergamo), but
also everyone working in all the communities where the Group operates. One of
the aspects we have invested in seriously in recent years is safety, and we’ve
achieved good results. Last year alone, over 330 workers were involved in
safety training sessions for a total of about 7,790 hours of classes and
workshops. We plan to continue along the same lines in order to motivate all
Group staff to build a real company culture of accident prevention”.

Training
courses on other topics were also carried out, for example: management systems
(quality, environment, energy etc.), introduction to the new business
management information systems, regulations and technical subjects needed to
improve company processes, for a total of 53,228 hours of training in 2016.

However,
to RadiciGroup, sustainability means more than products, production processes
and organizational dynamics. Sustainability involves the entire system. This is
why all RadiciGroup companies have published new Supplier and Customer Codes of
Conduct: voluntary formal commitments shared with the key players in the supply
chain to help make sustainability an integral part of business strategy. Both
Codes identify the values that should guide the business activities of everyone
who interacts - long or short-term - with the Group’s companies. Legality,
transparency, fairness, trust and collaboration are the principles underpinning
the development of a supply chain focused not only on product and service
quality, but also on the environmental, social and working conditions where the
products are made.

Subscribe online

Press registered at the Milan Court, n.144 at 03/22/2010 Pubblisher: Mario Maggiani.Reproduction prohibited, all rights reserved. The editorial staff disclaims all responsibility regarding the worth of articles and news from various sources.